I had two wildly varying customer service experiences this week – one with Land’s End and one with the Esalen Institute. Land’s End was superb and incredibly helpful. Esalen Institute not so much and I don’t care if I ever do business with them, no matter how great a retreat place they have down the Peninsula.

I’ve been working with Land’s End Business Outfitters to perfect some embroidery samples of a logo. We are on round three and have had many emails and phone calls between me Julie, the incredible artist and Meta, our wonderful rep at Land’s End. Meta has been nothing but helpful and has been diligent and creative in our quest to obtain a sample that we can use and print. I received one call from her and one (call and) voice mail from another rep who wanted to make sure I received the samples she sent me. She let me know that there were minimum quantities required for some of the promotional items and that there is a sale going on now for logo printing. She left me all of the details in perfect Wisconsin accented English, Eh? Meta called me to make sure that I knew that our last sample was approved and ready for printing and embroidering. She knew that I wasn’t ready to order but gave me a friendly reminder that we needed to pay for the set up fee before we could place an order. Very helpful, very kind, and makes me want to do business with Land’s End.

Unfortunately, my experience with the Esalen Institute was the polar opposite and took me to “Mr. Hyde” land. Last Spring, I tried to book a week of Jivamukti yoga at the Esalen Institute for this coming week. Unfortunately I was  wait listed. About a month ago when I was putting together September’s sports schedule for the kids along with my schedule for speaking engagements, I realized it wasn’t going to work. So, I went on the website to take my name off the wait list. There is nowhere to do this online. You have to call AND leave a voicemail – you can’t talk to a live person on their registration line. So, after several attempts to call and talk to someone, I leave a message (on August 14th, and 15th).

On August 26th – a full 12 days later, I get a voicemail from someone who says they don’t have a yoga workshop starting on Sept. 12th but they have one starting on the 11th and don’t worry about if I am just on the wait list. (Thankfully, I niggly little voice in the back of my head said keep this voicemail message until this situation is resolved and confirmed). A credit card alert let me know bright and early Wednesday morning that there was a charge for $855 on my card. (And later I found out that there was actually a second one for the same amount charged as well, but there was no alert for that one.)

I immediately hit call back on that voicemail and got someone who said to call back after 9 am on the main reservation line and that I had reached some back room “Secret” phone number. That was an interesting tidbit, but not helpful. I called back after 9 am and left a more explicit message because I still can’t get to a real person. Rick called me back and said that I was now booked for the workshop and that he couldn’t refund my money. He would have to speak to his supervisor.

Now, when I’m on the phone with United Airlines customer service, I always ask to speak to a supervisor right away because dealing with their outsourced customer service lands me in a foreign country where it takes 20 minutes to even find my account; dealing with a supervisor usually means the call is transferred back to the US – but now I was being told I couldn’t be helped without the rep talking to their supervisor – what a bunch of BS.

I stated exactly what I wanted and why – a reversal of all of  the charges because I had called on August 14th to be taken off the wait list and they hadn’t done that. I wasn’t the nicest person in the world in that moment, but I was very clear on the expected outcome. He said he couldn’t do that (again). I went around three times with him before he said, “I’ll have someone get back to you.” then, I’ll have my supervisor call you.” Rick (not his supervisor) calls me back a while later, where I apologized for biting his head off earlier – and he is still saying he can’t reverse the charges because I had booked the workshop. But his supervisor said it was OK for him to issue a refund except for a $75 charge and a $225 credit that I can use at a workshop in the future. Stopping him in mid sentence I again reiterated the calls and voicemails and request to be taken off the wait list and that I still had their voicemail if he would like to hear that. At that point, Rick said he needed to talk to his supervisor because he wasn’t authorized to do anything else.

Another call later he said that he could refund it all except the $75 charge. I said that makes no sense for something that wasn’t supposed to be booked in the first place after I requested to be removed from the wait list and that the charges (by now he had mentioned the second $855 charge) should not have been made in the first place. He finally relented (without going to the supervisor for a 4th time) that the charges would be reversed (both of them) and that it would take 3-4 days for it to appear. I asked how things are supposed to be cancelled if they don’t answer their phone or have a place on their website to cancel a reservation. He said you need to send an email to info@…  and he told me their hours of operation. They never answered their phone during those hours of operation. I never got a live person, ever, when I called them. Very crappy customer service. Very shoddy business practices to say something has been taken care of and then charge the customer anyway.

I recently read an article about Zappo’s – where you can buy shoes online – that means without trying them on, obviously. Zappo’s changed their whole customer experience around when they allowed returns without the return shipping charge – they did this because they wanted their customers to feel comfortable buying something online that is hard to fit without actually trying it on. They wanted their customers to be happy with their purchase experience. Now, if the Esalen Institute would only take a hint from Zappo’s they may have kept a customer for the future, but instead they lost a customer for good.

Do you have any good or bad customer service experiences to share in the comments???